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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26412253">Time after Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastyPirate/pseuds/PastyPirate'>PastyPirate</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Andy Centric, Angst and Feels, Attempts at historical accuracy, F/F, Gen, If You Squint - Freeform, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, M/M, Mutual Pining, References to Character Death, References to Depression, none of it sticks, probably not spot on, references to insurance scams, well one of them do, will be Jossed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:27:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,235</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26412253</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastyPirate/pseuds/PastyPirate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy marks the length of her life with the people she's found (and lost) along the way. </p><p>AKA Six people Andy has found, and three that she's lost.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andy | Andromache &amp; Booker | Sebastien &amp; Nile Freeman &amp; Joe | Yusuf &amp; Nicky | Nicolò &amp; Quynh, Andy | Andromache &amp; Booker | Sebastien le Livre &amp; Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani &amp; Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia &amp; Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani &amp; Nicky | Nicolò di Genova &amp; Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>125</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Time after Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> The First: </p>
</div>When Andromache first dreamt of The Woman, it was a clear night, with a bright shining moon illuminating her campsite. She no longer believed in gods, as she’d been dethroned recently, and she thought this was the gods’ bitter attempt to reclaim her attention.<p>She hated to admit that it worked. </p><p>The Woman moved across the backdrop of cities and villages that Andromache knew, but only partially. A woman after her own heart, as she moved quick and insistent. Always looking over her shoulder for demons that Andromache wanted to get away from her. If Andromache believed in guilty consciousness she would’ve thought that The Woman was a product of it. A specter moving in the darkness, always plagued by something just out of reach. </p><p>Until The Woman passed a man that Andromache knew once. Sixty years since she last saw him and it showed. </p><p>That's when she realized The Woman was real. </p><p>Now when The Woman cast glances over her shoulders, Andromache studied the clues. The script slapped on walls, the way people shouted at each other in the street, the sight of the stars. Anything and everything. </p><p>As a child she’d counted the summers, but then when so many summers passed, and she’d been in places where summers last a years at a time, she’d fallen out of the habit. Once she realized the woman was real, and undying, she started counting again. </p><p>As a God she’d had purpose, drive, she knew what she was about. But in her years since she’d wandered, helping where she could, not helping where she didn’t want to. Once she realized The Woman was real, she had purpose again. Drive. </p><p>It took her years to cross the high mountains, low valleys, and wide deserts. All the while The Woman moved herself, hard to pin down. As if Andromache was the demon that followed her. </p><p>When she died in the desert, Andromache stood above her and knew, for the first time in a few millennia, that she wasn’t alone. </p><p>“Who are you?” The Woman asked, stealing the words from Andromache’s lips.</p><p>“Andromache of Scythia,” She said, squatting down to hand over a water skin. The Woman gulped it readily, apparently not caring if it was poison. “And you?” </p><p>“Quynh,” she said, between gulps, “of nowhere.” </p><p>“Quynh,” Andromache said. It’d been a long time since she heard a name she would bother to remember. For a hundred summers she thought of Quynh as The Woman, and now the nickname faded away, as if she always knew her name was Quynh. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> The Second and the First: </p>
</div>Even now, the loss of Lykon eclipsed the beginning. The shock of it, the horror. The agony of losing someone that you once thought you would wander forever with. Andromache does her best not to think about it, and failed often.<div class="center">
  <p>The Third and The Fourth: </p>
</div>Quynh and Andromache were as far from Jerusalem as they could handle when the Crusades started. They were both technically wanted by several different Caliphs, nor were they particularly loved by the Pope, and they learned quickly that sometimes it was easier to just let history forget them. Besides, they predated the particular Abrahamic religions involved in the conflict (although Andromache was the only one who predated all Abrahmic religions, and was a little too preoccupied with being a God to pay attention to creation of Judaism) so it's easy enough for them to head to the coast. Quynh was always insistent that the fish was best in Dal Viet, and Andromache liked it when Quynh smiled. It’s a win win all around.<p>They’re on a boat, somewhere out at sea, when Quynh and Andromache dream of them for the first time. </p><p>Quynh lurched awake first, her hand reaching out to smack Andromache’s arm in easy familiarity. </p><p>“A Muslim man, no wait, a Catholic?” She said, confused. “What did you see?” </p><p>“A bloody battle. It could’ve been any of them,” Andromache said, sitting up and bending over her knees. Her heart still smarted with the absence of Lykon, but it made sense that they wouldn’t be just two for too long. “That was definitely Jerusalem though.” </p><p>“Or was it Acre?” Quynh shook her head, “you’re right, it’s Jerusalem.” </p><p>“Well,” Andromache looked around at the crew studying them. They were speaking a version of Vietnamese that had died out a thousand years earlier, before the northerners had invaded what was now Dal Viet. “Let’s go back to sleep. We’ll be back on shore soon enough and we can head that way.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> # </p>
</div>“It’s both of them?” Quynh said, days later when the two finally quit the battlefield. Glaring at each other from across a fire pit.<p>“I guess it’s both of them.” Andromache said. If there were gods, they saw how big the hole had been in Andromache’s heart when she lost Lykon, and sent her a bickering pair of religious dopes to try and fill it.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> # </p>
</div>The men head North, then East, then South, bickering their way towards Mecca. Andromache can understand both of their tongues, although she prefers it when they end up speaking Persian. The fire disappeared quickly. The two of them guarding each other at night, in markets, in fights.<p>They fight back to back, they come up with a quick language melding their own, they laugh over burned meat, they stare longingly at each other when the other isn’t looking. Quynh and Andromache saw this all in snaps and flashes, night after night. The men were looking for them too. </p><p>“How many Quan do you want to bet that those two will get together?” Quynh asked. </p><p>“Go find another sucker to take that bet.” Andromache responded, watching Quynh light up with laughter. </p><p>The next night the two men are curled together. Andromache gave Quynh a Quan anyways. Soon they’d be out of the currency’s reach and the money would be useless.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> # </p>
</div>It’s at the edge of the Himalayas that they meet. The men have hit a wall, neither of their linguistic abilities help them this far East. They’ve taken the time to stay in one place and learn as much as they can. Their travels are a network of languages. Persian areas feeding into Hindi, then Tibetan, and now Cantonese. Each place they arrive they pick up less than they had in the last place. Yusuf had picked up more than Nicolò, who was still struggling to get his tongue to wrap around the sounds of the languages.<p>They’re sitting at a table, side by side and leaning over a scroll. The blind leading the blind as Yusuf pointed out characters to Nicolò and explained them. </p><p>“Need a tutor?” Andromache asked in perfect, if not slightly older, Arabic. </p><p>The two of them turn, relief in their eyes fading into shock, and then excitement. </p><p>“You’re real,” Yusuf said. Nicolò stood up, a hand on Yusuf’s shoulder to balance him.</p><p>“Do you have a room here? I think we have a lot to catch up on,” Quynh said with a grin, her Arabic just as strong as Andromache’s, “then we can teach you some basics.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> The Second: </p>
</div>Neither of them try to talk her out of it. Which is somehow the worst thing. None of them are being the voice of reason here. None of them are saying what they all know. <i>The ocean is wide, sailors die quick and don’t know the stars like they once did.</i><p>Nicky and Joseph follow her, their mouths tightly shut. She knows it’s because if the tables were turned neither of them would be able to give up either. </p><p>Andrea, as she was going by those days, wasn’t a crier. She’d seen too much sorrow and loss to cry even when she was still young. The wrenching sobs in the hulls of countless ships can’t be hers, and yet, they are. </p><p>Decades have passed. The colonies are being settled. There’s people being killed left and right. She has a duty that she has long since accepted is higher than herself. </p><p>Nicky and Joe wait on deck with her, their bags ready to go. There’s a war brewing somewhere and she needs to put her axe in a few heads, needs to stop feeling like <i>this</i>, needs to stop chasing something she can’t fix. </p><p>Someone needs to be the responsible one.</p><p>When they walk off the ship, they walk off the dock and into the city. She doesn’t say Quynh’s name again.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> The Fifth:</p>
</div>“A frenchman!” Joe said, strolling into Andy’s rooms, flinging the doors wide open. The call for prayer is echoing beyond her windows, and she knows Joe is excited by the way he ignores it.<p>“Did you see him too?” Nicky asked, stepping over to sit on her windowsill. She wants to kick them both out, but it’s been a few years since they traveled together, and she’s missed them deeply. She cant help but feel like they reconvened just in time for another one to be brought. </p><p>“Yeah, I saw him. Napoleon's army.” Andy (Andrea had become too proper too quick, and had been abandoned) said, sitting on the edge of her bed. It’s soft because the proprietor thinks they’re wealthy. Little do they know that all they have is useless foreign currency and patches of land all over the world. </p><p>“At least it’ll be easy enough to find him.” Nicky said, “we could be on a merchant ship to Paris within a few days.” </p><p>“We have to finish our work here.” </p><p>Nicky looks at her, and with seven-hundred years between them she knows exactly what he’s thinking. </p><p>“It takes years to find a new one. Decades sometimes. We can’t let what’s happening here continue. Besides. He’ll be fine.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>#</p>
</div>He has children. Three of them, who adore him despite the forgery stains on his sleeves, and the hunger in all of their stomachs. She has her own aches and pains, but it hurts her to ignore Nicky and Joe’s. There’s not a lot of privacy between them, after so many years together, but this is one thing she doesn’t poke and prod her way into.<p>The man doesn’t seem to care about their existence. He’s trying too hard to stay ahead, take care of the mouths who are dependent on him. It doesn’t take him long to start using his newfound skill to bridge that gap. Each time the three of them wake gasping at the pain of it, the hurt deep in their hearts. </p><p>By the time they arrive, his wife thinks him dead (for real) and the children are fat and well taken care of. </p><p>He’s doing his best to drink himself to death (and has already succeeded at least twice) when they find him in the shadow of Notre Dame. </p><p>His head tilted up, eyes narrowed as he pointed up at them, “Do I know you?” </p><p>Nicky and Joe are on either side of her, as they are often. </p><p>“Come along Sebastian,” Andy said, “We got a lot to talk about.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> The Sixth: </p>
</div>Maybe the years and decades it used to take to find new ones are so they can settle down into this new reality of theirs. Definitely none of them have stabbed her before. At least, not at the first meeting.<p><i>I should’ve let Nicky and Joe get her</i> she thought, as Nile glared at her from the passenger seat, blood soaking into her shoulders. She usually sent Nicky and Joe to deal with the wounded, the people in need of a soft touch. They have kindness in their hearts that millenia have sapped away from Andy. </p><p>She offered up some baklava to Nile, who just narrowed her eyes at her. With a shrug Andy took another bite.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> The Third: </p>
</div><i>I’ve never gotten to say goodbye before</i> The traitorous thought leapt into her mind as she cupped the back of Booker’s neck, holding him close. The constant companion in her misery.<p>She reminds herself that because she’s never said goodbye before, this probably isn’t goodbye. Their fates are far more entwined than that. It’s destiny. </p><p>Andy leaves Booker on the edge of the Thames. Hating England for always taking from her.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>And When Andromache of Scythia Was Found:</p>
</div>Booker’s mouth was dripping blood, although the wound had already closed up. It was the shock more than anything else. They weren’t expecting visitors.<p>“I deserved that!” Booker said, putting both his hands up as Joe shook the pressure off his hand, “I snuck up on you.” </p><p>“What part of a hundred years do you not understand?” Nicky asked, as if he wasn’t the one who had told Andy to go to Booker the night before. She knew it was mostly for her sake, afterall Nicky was the one who had initially suggested two hundred years. </p><p>“There was something time sensitive.” Booker said, stepping inside the doorway, and making room for someone else to come in. </p><p>For a strangled beat, she thought she was about to be betrayed again. Betrayals were rare, and second ones had never happened. There’s a first time for everything. </p><p>Instead Quynh stepped into the doorway, and Andy’s heart was soring, straining against her chest. She thinks this might be the thing that actually kills her. </p><p>“Long time no see,” Quynh said, stepping into the room and nodding at Nile, before turning her smile on Andy. “I think we need to talk.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I opened a doc to write smutty Joe/Nicky and wrote Andy's eternal angst instead??? I need to leave the fandom. I am a reckless soul. </p><p>A note on languages and history:<br/>I tried to figure out what the chain of languages would be from West to East but obviously glossing over a lot of regional dialects that were in use. If there's any major errors please let me know. </p><p>I was really struggling w Andy's voice which is why she didn't show up too much in the previous installments but for some reason I really wanted to write this story? Depressed vodka aunt has lost her friends and family but she ends up winning in the end.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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